With new pact, Mayo Clinic deepens ties to ASU

February 17, 2011

By Flinn Foundation

Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University have announced a formal agreement to expand their collaboration on education and research. The two institutions’ eight-year record of joint projects will be augmented initially by the move of ASU’s Department of Biomedical Informatics to Mayo’s Scottsdale campus from the downtown Phoenix Biomedical Campus, with officials forecasting additional partnership going forward.

“We are very excited about this agreement, which reflects our mutual commitment to working closely with our partners at ASU as we continue to enhance our ongoing collaborations across a broad variety of projects and programs,” said Victor Trastek, vice president, Mayo Clinic and CEO for Mayo Clinic in Arizona. “One important area of focus with ASU is our collective ability to redesign medical education in ways that align with the future of health-care delivery.”

In time for the Fall 2011 semester, some 45 students and 15 faculty from ASU’s biomedical informatics department will be installed at Mayo’s Samuel C. Johnson Research Center, said Michael Yardley, Mayo Clinic Arizona chair of public affairs, in the State Press.

“There are tremendous synergies at work here,” said Sethuraman Panchanathan, ASU’s chief research officer. “In order to advance biomedical informatics education and research, we need to be embedded in a clinical environment. It will provide extraordinary opportunities for ASU faculty and students to work in one of the top clinical facilities in the country and advance education, research, and training in biomedical informatics.”

Biomedical informatics, which uses data-gathering and analysis to make more accurate health-care decisions, is critical to the evolution of clinical practice,said Mayo Clinic President and CEO John Noseworthy.

“In the future, our hope is to take everything that is known in the world of biomedical research and science and practice, and filter out the stuff that is wrong or doesn’t apply, and then focus that on the individual patient,” Dr. Noseworthy said.

At a broader level, the pact between Mayo and ASU is intended to sustain momentum built over the past eight years. During that time, several joint degree programs have been established, including M.D./J.D. andM.D./M.B.A. programs; Mayo and ASU have collaborated on nursing education; joint research projects have been supported through a seed-grant program; and the two institutions have established collaborative cancer-research projects. Most recently, they announced that Mayo’s new proton-beam cancer-therapy center would be supported in part by physicists from ASU.

“For Mayo Clinic, this will mean engagement with ASU at all levels across the entire organization, spanning activities in all three shields of practice, education, and research,” Dr. Noseworthy said.

Dr. Trastek has acknowledged that Mayo and ASU have discussed the possibility of a jointly administered medical school, the Arizona Republic reported in November, but decisions about such a project have not been made.